Review

Review Summary: You will not find a girl band that is hotter or harder than Crucified Barbara.

Metal and rock bands that only consist of female musicians are not usual in a male-overcrowded music scene. Seriously, you can almost say that there are at least 80-90% male bands and the rest of the percentage is female bands. The truth is that girl-bands can be just as heavy and ass-kicking as male-bands. It is just that there are a lot fewer women who listen to extreme metal music and therefore they rather keep it to themselves instead of sharing their musical interest to other people (which is a shame). There is a swedish band called Crucified Barbara and they are a band that only consists of females and they really know how to rock and have a real good time! The girls in Crucified Barbara plays a really cocky and hard-hitting mix of heavy metal blended with small amounts of thrash metal influences. This is a fiery chick band and they will take you on a nasty ride through their latest release called Til Death Do us Party!

Crucified Barbara is not a highly recognizable band (yet) but their reputation is getting stronger every day as they are getting more and more attention and promotion. The girls' debut album was unfortunately not one of the most successful ones. Mia's vocal performance was pretty bland and inexperienced, the track and lyric variety was out-dated and not exactly top-notch, the sound production was a bit off and there was a small lack of passion and energy in the music. And people who know their music can tell right away if a band is lacking or possessing the right amount of energy in their music. In their newest album Til Death Do us Party things has thankfully changed. Everything has been incredibly improved, musically, instrumentally, lyrically you name it. The swedish metal hotties are here to give you some real sex-metal action!

Let's start with Mia Coldheart which is the lead singer and guitarist. This girl has really been improving herself both with her vocal and guitar skills. Her vocals are a lot stronger and balanced now compared to her performance in their debut album. Her vibratos are excellent and her regular vocals are really loud and they also have a really tough attitude in them. And let's not forget her immense 14 second scream that she forces out during the intro to the song called Creatures, absolutely outstanding vocal performance! Mia's best vocal performances in this album would be without a doubt in tracks like Creatures and Blackened Bones where she really pushes her vocals to the limit and it still sounds really good.

Mia Coldheart and Klara Force are the two guitarists in this band and they are doing a fine job delivering hefty riffs and cool solos. Thanks to a better sound production the guitars has a better and stronger sound that really makes your speakers to bleed metal-infused rock music. All the rhythm sections consist of heavy palm-muted chugging and hard-hitting power-chords and the lead guitar is filling in with string bendings, catchy leads and solos. The overall guitar performance is not to be compared to established metal bands and that is a important note to add. This guitar performance is actually quite simply structured and is therefore not highly technical or complex. Bottom-line is that the girls can handle their guitars with ease and skill but still make simple music that sounds tough and aggressive.

Ida Evileye is the bassist of the band and unfortunately there is not much to say about her. The only thing is that her bass is a lot more audible and crunchy compared to In Distortion We Trust and that is actually a really good thing. Ida's bass really adds a lot of sound textures to the already heavily distorted-drenched guitars and it makes the music extra beefy and heavy. She doesn't contribute with any sorts of vocals, she just pounding on with the bass to maintain a solid wall of sound. Hopefully she will contribute with some nice bass-fills and perhaps some vocals in the future, which would be a cool addition for a possible up-coming album.

And finally we have Nicki Wicked which is the drummer in this incredibly hot band. And just like Ida, there is sadly not much to say about Nicki. She is tight on the drums and she doesn't run off with some strange and un-focused drum sections. Nicki is providing the band with catchy and heavy drum beats that really flows well with the rest of the crew. There are not many signs of improvement in the drum performance except that Nicki is using some slow-paced pedal work from time to time compared to the debut album. But she is doing well behind the drum kit nonetheless. The drums are loud, catchy and pulsing. Simple and effecitve drumming instead of complex and unfocused mambo-jambo. This time it is just to realize that it is the guitars that make the music, not the drums.

Til Death Do Us Party is more than twice as better than In Distortion We Trust. The sound production has been greatly enhanced so all the instruments are extra loud and crunchy, Mia's vocals are stronger and more balanced while the track and lyric variety has been greatly improved. This time it is about revenging old boyfriends, payback and stuff like that just includes a bad attitude and stuff. You could almost compare this album with a new type of whisky. Their debut album was new, young and fresh to the market but nobody wasn't that interested and stayed to the already established brands and the album was left to the unknown. But now when a second album has been released people decided to pay a revisit to see if something has changed and they later realized that this might actually lead to something new and interesting. Til Death Do Us Party is not an album that will instantly make an impression to the listener, it might take some time to really get used to the album or hopefully people will fall in love in this album in a blink of an eye. This album (and band) is highly recommend to people who are interested in metal or rock bands that only consists of young and healthy women. Cricified Barbara is a crew of hot young Swedes who doesn't try to break their own individual boundaries in terms of instrumental or vocal performances and they are not some kind of stupid pretenders. They create music because it’s is cool and fun, and just like Dave Mustaine from Megadeth said once. ''We're not creating music just for a f****ing dollar-sign''. Well, sort of but he said something like that in a metal-documentary some years ago. You will not find a girl band that is hotter or harder than Crucified Barbara.